Food
The quiet luxury of eating alone in a restaurant
The best meal I had last year, I ate alone on a Tuesday. On the sympathetic head tilt, ordering the pudding anyway, and why…
The archive
Journal
30 pieces on clothes, rooms, books, food and the ordinary business of taking up space.
Confidence
What I learned from wearing red before I felt ready
For fifteen years I owned nothing red and called it taste. On visibility, colour, and the myth that confidence must arrive before a woman is allowed to get dressed.
Life
Sunday afternoons belong to me now
It is twenty past one and I have achieved nothing. On rest that is not earned, the four o'clock dread, and why one protected…
Life
The girl I was before I learned to take up space
I spent a long time carrying other people’s opinions about my body as though they were my own. This is about the girl who…
Plus-Size Living
My body is not a before picture
For years I treated my body as a draft — something to be corrected before the real version of my life could begin. This…
Plus-Size Living
I no longer apologise for the way I take up a doorway
I used to turn sideways in doorways when nobody was coming. An inventory of the small ways women learn to shrink, and what it…
Confidence
You do not need to be less of anything to be enough
Women are taught to reduce almost everything about themselves and call it good manners. A cornerstone piece on the habit of shrinking, and what…
Notes
To the woman starting again
For anyone beginning again after a hard stretch — an ending, an illness, a change you did not choose. A short letter about the…
Life
I am not building my life around other people’s approval anymore
Approval is a strange currency. You can spend years earning it and still not be able to buy anything with it. On the small,…
Books
Some books are not meant to be finished
I abandoned a prize-listed novel at page ninety and felt immediately, uncomplicatedly happy. On the rule of fifty, sunk costs, and why finishing is…
Plus-Size Living
You can want better health without hating your body
Body acceptance is not a rejection of health, and wanting to feel stronger is not a betrayal of yourself. A careful look at a…
Style
I stopped dressing to look smaller
Almost every styling rule I was given had the same hidden objective. Once I noticed it, most of my wardrobe stopped making sense —…
Confidence
Confidence is much quieter than I thought
I spent years waiting to feel a certain way before I did anything. It turns out confidence is not a feeling that arrives first…